You can hear everything perfectly but just at a normal 'speaking volume' rather than whatever the volume is in the room/club/concert.Quite amazing. Even when people come up to you and scream in your ears to try to talk to you, you can hear them perfectly clearly rather than the usual distorted roar you would normally hear!

I've been in clubs where the bass is shaking your organs and it just sounds like you are listening to a hifi at home on a low-medium volume.

It is a massive relief to come out of a club or live event and have perfectly fresh, non-ringing ears, and perfect hearing.

When you hear everyone else still shouting at each other to talk once the music has stopped you realise how fked their hearing must be.

Although of course (since this is PH) revving engines at close quarters during tuning etc. will do a fair bit of damage to the cilia

The most intense and painfull sound i ever experienced was at Santa Pod when looking at a top fuel dragster up on stands in the paddock,the engine was running at a lumpy tick over while the mechanics worked on something then without warning he blipped the throttle, the noise for that split second was agonising..

Try Tractor pulling and 5 of the damn things in unison - I experienced pain, then it was tissue in the ears from then on.

I don't know if concert damage is permanent - gut feeling is that it isn't unless you are doing it freqeuntly, but I'm no doctor

The damage is always permanent - the ear and the brain are very good at filtering out the damage and so you'll end up with worse hearing but it won't be obvious. Eventually it gets to the point where there is so much damage your body can't figure out what's sound and what's noise any more. That's when you get the tinnitus.

When I'm out roadying, the ear plugs will only come out for around two minutes in the whole night - when the band is playing through a song in soundcheck and I have to go out front to check out the mix. Other than that I'm wearing industrial-type earplugs all the time. It's telling that in most of Europe they are given away free in pretty much every venue.

Rehearsals are definitely the worst for ear hurt - three hours in a room the size of a shower with two marshall stacks, a 500w bass rig and a drum kit is no fun at all.

The damage is always permanent - the ear and the brain are very good at filtering out the damage and so you'll end up with worse hearing but it won't be obvious. Eventually it gets to the point where there is so much damage your body can't figure out what's sound and what's noise any more. That's when you get the tinnitus.

Actually the onset of tinnitus isn't always a result of noise-induced hearing loss and isn't an inevitable consequence of noise exposure. While all noise exposure will cause irreperable damage leading to reduced ability to pick up the human speech frequencies, cases of tinnitus are very much less predictable and often occur from single 'shock' events rather than prolonged exposure. The nature of the damaging noise appears to affect some people (e.g. steam system blow downs) and there may be a genetic pre-disposition to developing tinnitus. Never thought my job would ever come into play on a PH thread!!

The most intense and painfull sound i ever experienced was at Santa Pod when looking at a top fuel dragster up on stands in the paddock,the engine was running at a lumpy tick over while the mechanics worked on something then without warning he blipped the throttle, the noise for that split second was agonising..

Ahhh, the old methanol warm up then onto the highside routine. Engine note changes somewhat when nitro loaded fuel is introduced... just to add to your alarm, did you notice the crew were most likely wearing gas masks? While your hearing was being mangled, your lungs were also being dissolved in nitric acid

The difference is that you get a volume change but not a tonal change - playing with foam earplugs left the drums feeling like hitting sponges, with decent earplugs everything feels "normal".

Thanks, I understand what you've said about volume/tonal now. I've not used foam ones for years (since school or something) since I know they're rubbish - the above ones pictured which I use are rubber.

I've been going to gigs since 1973. The loudest that I can recall were Motorhead at Hammersmith in 1979 and Airbourne at the Astoria (RIP) in 2008. On both occasions it took 3 days for my hearing to get back to normal.

I had a hearing test recently, and was told it was still very good, though I do have a bit of tinnitus in the right ear. Overall, I'm pretty sure that I have sustained some hearing damage, but I've never worn earplugs as I feel that the volume is all part of the live experience. I did try them once (because I had a meeting the morning after a Motorhead gig) and I just didn't enjoy it so much.

Me too. I've seen them a few times and it's taken me 3-4 days on average to recover. On one occasion about 12 years ago, I saw them on two consecutive nights (Nottingham Rock City and Manchester Apollo). On the way back from the Manchester gig, we had full-on car smash and wrecked a nearly new Peugeot. The Police were on the scene and looked at me a bit funny when I insisted on retrieving my signed Mikkey Dee drumsticks from the wreckage!